


At Sadler's Wells Theatre, 1934

by bethagain



Series: December Stories [3]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 31 Days of Ineffables, Ballet, Gen, The Nutcracker, advent fic challenge, small miracles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-04
Updated: 2019-12-04
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:14:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21666511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bethagain/pseuds/bethagain
Summary: A ficlet about Aziraphale, the first production ofThe Nutcrackerin London, and unintentional miracles.
Series: December Stories [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1561195
Comments: 7
Kudos: 32





	At Sadler's Wells Theatre, 1934

**Author's Note:**

> Another one for the 31 Days of Ineffables advent fic challenge. The prompt for this one was _nutcracker._

The best time to dance _The Nutcracker,_ if you’re going to do it or rather, were going to have done it, was in 1934. On Roseberry Avenue in the London district of Islington. In a square-ish brick building with an arched window on the second floor and a half-circle marquee over the front doors. And on the marquee, in simple, square-ish letters, the name of the place: Sadler’s Wells Theater.

Aziraphale must have gone to see the show a dozen times. You might think he had something to do with the unlikely way the production had come to London, choreography notes snatched up by the former regisseur of St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre as he fled Stalin’s Russia, making his way to England as a guest on a Royal Navy warship. 

In fact, Aziraphale wasn’t paying much attention to Russia. As a Principality assigned to England, he had about 37 million other people on his mind. Not all at once, mind you. But still, it was a lot.

Which is why he enjoyed a break now and then. And even with the uneven story and the strange disconnect between the first and second acts, he was carried away every time by Tchaikovsky’s charming music, by the lovely costumes, by the spectacle of it all. 

Backstage each night, in dressing rooms and hallways and rehearsal rooms, the company’s ballerinas would shed their coats and city shoes. They’d pull leotards and tutus from hangers, stretch tights over tired legs. They’d sit on the floor or perch on the edges of chairs, chatting with each other as they put fresh bandages on blistered feet, pushed bruised toes into silk pointe shoes, tied ribbons up around their ankles.

And somewhere among the gossip, at least one ballerina would wonder out loud: would _he_ be there that evening? 

Before every performance, the whole cast waited for word. Someone--a stagehand, a dancer’s cousin, an understudy who wasn’t needed that night--would be posted by a window where they could see the audience arrive. 

They’d watch, and wait, looking for a pale-haired man in an ivory colored coat. And some nights, they’d pass the word back, and the whisper would hurry along the hallways, through the wings, behind the stage: _He’s here, he’s here._

Aziraphale didn’t do it on purpose. He simply loved the ballet, and by extension he loved everyone it. 

The cast didn’t know who he was, or why the magic happened. No one even remembered how they figured out the connection. Maybe it was because of the night he stopped to chat with the orchestra’s conductor, and some of the dancers, bundled up against the weather and passing by on their way home, caught his beaming smile as he thanked them for a beautiful show. Maybe it was the night he sat in the front row and called, “Bravo! Brava!” as each dancer took their bow.

However it started, it was tradition now, ballet superstition, and the dancers never failed to watch for him. 

Because on the nights when the man with the radiant smile came to see _The Nutcracker,_ nobody’s feet hurt when dancing en pointe. Nobody went home with new blisters, nobody bled through their shoes. On the nights when Aziraphale was at the ballet, ballerinas really floated on air.


End file.
